The Foundation of Sabbath and Sunday Observance.
By G. D. Ballou
I. The foundation of Sabbath observance. The Sabbath is an institution of primary importance. Dating from the time that man stood in sinless purity before his Maker in Eden (Gen. 2)—a twin institution with marriage—we may trace its existence and observance all through the ages of sin, past the final consummation, over into the eternal ages of the Eden restored. When the earth, freed from the curse, shall put on her garments of glory and beauty, and become the everlasting abode of the redeemed race of men, then will the Sabbath be observed as God designed from the beginning. Then will all flesh come up to worship before the Lord from new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath. Isa. 65:17-25; 66:22, 23. An institution of such consequence to the human race as to be made eternal, must rest on a good foundation. Let us examine. 1. The Sabbatic institution is based on the spiritual wants of man. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” This sentence sets forth the great fact that the Sabbath was designed, primarily, for sacred rest and worship. Making it merely a physical rest would not make it holy; rest for worship is the important idea. What need of such a rest? In creating man, God gave him physical, intellectual, and spiritual powers. In the material world he furnished the means for supplying man's physical and intellectual wants. In giving the Sabbath, God furnished the means for supplying man's spiritual necessities. Man was made to worship. Even in sinless purity he must love his Creator with all his heart, and this love must culminate in acts of devotion and worship. The Sabbath was designed to advance man's spiritual interests throughout the ages of eternity, and without an appointed time for worship, man's spiritual nature must have languished. The Creator is a God of order and consistency, and in so important a matter as this, he would not leave a chance for a mistake; so he appointed at creation a specific time, the last day of the seven, as a time for holy rest and worship. Gen. 2:1-3. In the work of creation we find the six laboring days of the week, and here God adds the last day for the purpose of perpetuating the remembrance of himself and his creative work among the new-born race. Here, then, we have the first and great corner-stone of the Sabbatic structure, the spiritual wants of man growing out of the relations between God as the Creator and man as the creature. 2. The next corner-stone is the facts of creation. Passing over the minutiae of the precept, we come to the words, “for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” Here it is plainly stated that God chose to work six days in creating all things connected with this heaven and earth, and here we have a corner-stone for the Sabbath, that is as enduring as the earth itself. Just as long as the earth shall endure and man shall exist, even though it be in the redeemed state, and the manifold works of God remain to attest his wisdom and power, so long will there be necessity for the heaven-appointed memorial—the Sabbath—to commemorate this work of creation. 3. The third corner-stone is the example of God in resting. The command continues, “and rested the seventh day.” The Lord himself rested or ceased to create, and contemplating his work he pronounced it “good.” We have no account of his resting on any day but the seventh. We think it noble to follow the example of great men. Surely here is an example that is worthy our noblest ambition. And Jesus followed this example, and kept creation's rest-day when he was here among men. Shall we not do well to follow his example? 4. The fourth and last great corner-stone lies in the fact that God blessed the Sabbath day, and set it apart to a holy use. The words of the command are, “Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” He pronounced the heavenly benediction on this day, and then appointed it for man's use. In Gen. 2:3 we read that he “blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” The word “sanctify” means “to set apart to a holy use.” Jesus says (Mark 2:27), “The Sabbath was made for man.” At the very thresh-old of human existence, the Creator appointed the day he would have man use for spiritual purposes. Since he placed no restrictions or limitations as to the length of time he designed this institution to stand, and has never taken away his blessing from it or placed his blessing upon any other day, how dare men teach that it is no longer sacred to the worship of Jehovah? Based on the spiritual necessities of man; founded in the facts of creation; honored by God's example; honored by his divine blessing and appointment; spoken by him from Sinai among the “lively oracles;” honored by Christ; observed by holy men; to be kept in the earth made new,—what other institution presents so many evidences of Heavenly origin as “the Sabbath of the Lord our God?” We should “stand in awe and sin not.” II. Foundation of Sunday observance. Many people honestly suppose that Jesus and the disciples really changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, in honor of the resurrection of Christ. But many of this class become convinced that there is no truth in this supposition, after they have been led to investigate carefully for themselves. It is not my province in this article to show the steps by which Sunday arose, but only to lay bare the foundation on which it rests. Anticipating what every honest seeker for truth will find by candid investigation, I affirm that the Bible says not one word about a change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first of the week. There is not a text in the entire volume to show that God, or Christ, or any angel or apostle ever rested upon or sanctified the first day of the week; and there is not in all the New Testament the record of a single religious gathering in the day-time of the first day. Acts 20:7-14 gives account of an all-night meeting in the night between what we call Saturday and Sunday. Paul staid and held one more meeting with the brethren at Troas, the last one he expected to hold with them on earth, while his company took the ship and sailed forty miles around the peninsula to Assos; and the next morning (what we call Sunday morning) he went overland nineteen miles on foot, to meet the ship at Assos. The Bible testimony for Sunday-keeping is wanting, and many of its defenders have been forced to acknowledge that its origin was not divine, and that it has neither authority nor sacredness, except as derived from church enactments. As a heathen festival, it was observed in honor of the sun, from which it was named, even as far back as the days of Moses. You will find this statement made good in Morer's “Dialogues on the Lord's Day” (pp. 22, 23), and by many other authorities. As to its so-called Christian character, it crept into the church along with other heathen customs, between the years A. D. 200 and A. D. 400. It did not, however, become a rest-day or Sabbath until the decrees of popes and councils had been many times brought to its rescue. It was not until after the year 800 A. D. that its Sabbatic character was even partially established, and to the present time its authority has ever been questioned, and but very few have ever sacredly regarded the day. Sunday observance rests on a purely human foundation. We substantiate this statement in a two-fold manner. First, by the testimony of human authority; and second, by the entire absence of Scripture testimony as to its sacredness. The defenders of Sunday observance, in their desperation, have written volumes of assertions, and have argued learnedly, without bringing one “Thus saith the Lord.” "Vast circuits they through logic's fields have run,
And found themselves at last where they begun." We would gladly quote from the Bible upon this point, but the nature of the institution is such that the Bible is silent in regard to it, except in Dan. 7:25, where the prophet clearly foretells that the little-horn power would attempt to change the times and laws of God, and would blaspheme his name and destroy his saints. This testimony alone is sufficient to show that we must look to secular history for the authority for Sunday observance. Please read carefully the following quotations from leading Protestant church historians and writers. Heylyn, in his history of the Sabbath, says:—
“Take which you will, either the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them on the first day of the week.” Sir. Wm. Domville, says:—
“Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or his apostles.” Coleman, in an extensive volume, entitled “Ancient Christianity Exemplified,” says:—
“No law or precept appears to have been given by Christ or the apostles, either for the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, or the substitution of the first for the seventh day of the week.” The following we find in the “Encyclopedia Brittanica,” art. Sunday, edition of 1842:—
“It was Constantine the Great who first made a law for the proper observance of Sunday; and who, according to Eusebius, appointed it should be regularly celebrated throughout the Roman Empire. Before him, and even in his time, they observed the Jewish Sabbath, as well as Sunday; both to satisfy the law of Moses, and to imitate the apostles who used to meet together on the first day. By Constantine's law, promulgated in 321, it was decreed that for the future the Sunday should be kept as a day of rest in all cities and towns; but he allowed the country people to follow their work.” We quote Morer's testimony again:—
“The Lord's day had no command that it should be sanctified, but it was left to God's people to pitch on this or that day for the public worship. And being taken up and made a day of meeting for religious exercises, yet for three hundred years there was no law to bind them to it, and for want of such a law, the day was not wholly kept in abstaining from common business; nor did they any longer rest from their ordinary affairs (such was the necessity of those times) than during the divine service.” Domville, in his “Examination of the Six Texts,” p. 291, tersely states the same fact:—
“Centuries of the Christian era passed away before the Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A. D. 321.” This array of evidence might be greatly extended, showing all the particular steps by which Sunday grew from a festival day into a Sabbath, as it did under the popes, but we close by one quotation from Peter Heylyn, a distinguished member of the Church of England. In his History of the Sabbath, from which we have already quoted, he sums the matter all up in the following words:—
“Thus do we see upon what grounds the Lord's day stands; on CUSTOM FIRST, and VOLUNTARY consecration of it to religious meetings; that custom countenanced by the authority of the church of God, which TACITLY approved the same; and FINALLY CONFIRMED and RATIFIED BY CHRISTIAN PRINCES throughout their empires. And as the day for rest from labors and restraint from business upon that day, [it] received its greatest strength from the supreme magistrate as long as he retained that power which to him belongs; as after from the canons and decrees of councils, the decretals of popes and orders of particular prelates, when the sole managing of ecclesiastical affairs was committed to them.
“I hope it was not so with the former Sabbath, which neither took original from custom, that people being not so forward to give God a day; nor required any countenance or authority from the kings of Israel to confirm and ratify it. The Lord had spoke the word, that he would have one day in seven, precisely the seventh day from the world's creation, to be a day of rest unto all his people; which said, there was no more to do but gladly to submit and obey his pleasure. . . . But thus it was not done in our present business. The Lord's day had no such command that it should be sanctified, but was left plainly to God's people to pitch on this, or any other, for the public use. And being taken up amongst them and made a day of meeting in the congregation for religious exercises; yet for three hundred years there was neither law to bind them to it, nor any rest from labor or from worldly business required upon it.
“And when it seemed good unto Christian princes, the nursing fathers of God's church, to lay restraints upon their people, yet at the first they were not general; but only thus that certain men in certain places should lay aside their ordinary and daily works, to attend God's service in the church; those whose employments were most toilsome and most repugnant to the true nature of a Sabbath, being allowed to follow and pursue their labors because most necessary to the commonwealth.
“And in the following times, when as the prince and prelate, in their several places endeavored to restrain them from that also, which formerly they had permitted, and interdicted almost all kinds of bodily labor upon that day; it was not brought about without much struggling and an opposition of the people; more than a thousand years being past, after Christ's ascension, before the Lord's day had attained that state in which533now it standeth. . . . And being brought into that state, wherein now it stands, it doth not stand so firmly and on such sure grounds, but that those powers which raised it up may take it lower if they please, yea take it quite away as unto the time, and settle it on any other day as to them seems best.” Thus we do see the foundations on which these two rival institutions rest. The one divine and Heaven-ordained, eternal in its nature, the other a profane Pagan festival, adopted and fostered by an apostate church, one which, like all the institutions of men, must perish. It is time for those who love the example of Jesus, and desire to honor the authority of Heaven, to "put difference between the sacred and the profane." See Eze. 22:24-30. It is time for those who profess to love God to turn away from the commandments of men, and show their loyalty to Heaven by obedience to God's precepts, otherwise their worship will prove to be all in vain.